


Of Longing

by willneverbeordinary



Series: Matters of the Heart [1]
Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: M/M, Post-Episode: s03e13 The Wrath of the Lamb
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-31
Updated: 2015-12-31
Packaged: 2018-05-10 14:25:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,039
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5589526
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/willneverbeordinary/pseuds/willneverbeordinary
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Hannibal spends a lot of his time watching Will.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Of Longing

Will is asleep and Hannibal is watching him from the doorway. The scent of a sleepwarm body is thick in the air and Hannibal inhales deeply. Each night since the fall he sets alarms in intervals and goes from his bedroom to Will’s and watches for the steady rise and fall of Will’s chest. He watches for a while, a few minutes more than usually, perhaps, before quietly closing the door and going back to his own room.

Hannibal crawls beneath the covers and lays for a while with the covers tucked close around his body. After a little while he gets up again and fetches a sleeping shirt.  He tries to pull the covers closer around himself and closes his eyes and paints touch and warmth and sound and taste inside his mind. He builds a portrait of Will with brush strokes of memories and smiles as the blood in his veins gradually heat up.

The image is Will not long after the fall. Hannibal had been rendered unconscious and had only awaken on an unfamiliar boat. Will had been sitting on the floor, looking at him. Hannibal’s mind immediately painted him as a wild creature, a wolf with watchful eyes. Will had been broken and bleeding and beautiful.

With that image Hannibal falls back asleep.

The morning spills in through the small window and scratches at Hannibal’s eyelids. It's a slanted, cold light; an anemic sun that will barely have strength to drag itself across the sky before sinking heavily, bleeding, beyond the horizon again. Hannibal shifts, fights the heaviness of his limbs and the fog inside his skull and slowly sits up. With slow motions he reaches for his woolen socks and gets up to pull a thick robe on top of his sleeping wear. There is a distinct pounding behind his eyelids as he makes his way to the kitchen and he gets his painkillers and swallows them with a glass of water that he cleans and dries and puts away in the cupboard again. He pushes it a fraction of an inch to the left and closes the cupboard. A moment later he hears the sound of first one door opening and then another opening and closing, a lock turning. There’s the rustling of water and the creaking of pipes and the door being unlocked and opened again.

When Will appears in the kitchen Hannibal glances at him from the corner of his eye and then looks back down at the breakfast he is making. He moves slowly. Leans against the counter. With a hand pressed to his abdomen he lifts a cast iron pan. He doesn’t get it halfway from its place to the stove before he feels a hand around his. He tenses. Something flares up inside and he feels his muscles coil and instantly Will’s hand disappear. Hannibal steals another glance over his shoulder at Will, and Will has put the kitchen table between himself and Hannibal.

Hannibal feels his strained muscles relax somewhat.

With a light tremor to his hand and arm he places the pan on the stove.

He hears Will leave the kitchen.

Will returns when breakfast is ready to be served and Hannibal sees him from the corner of his eye. His movements are slow, his left arm broken, and he still limps. Slowly, with on hand on the chair and one hand on the tabletop, Will lowers himself to sit down onto the chair with a grunt. After placing a pitcher of orange juice and their breakfast on the table, Hannibal takes his seat as well.

“Greek yoghurt with hazelnuts, pumpkin seeds, raspberries and slices of banana. And freshly squeezed orange juice,” Hannibal says.

“None for you?”

Hannibal touches his fingertips to his stomach through layers of clothes, hand hidden away beneath the table.

“Perhaps later,” he says.

Will makes a humming noise and picks up his spoon. He looks at his food as he eats and Hannibal looks at him.

“What was the pan for?” Will stops and looks up, eyebrows slightly knitted.

Hannibal drops his gaze, pokes at his fruit with his spoon as he answers. “I was considering making crêpes.”

“And you decided against it?”

“Yes.”

Will hums again and resumes eating.

Hannibal eats perhaps one bite for every four of Will’s and as Will finishes he picks his bowl and spoon and emptied glass up, and brings them to the sink and washes them. Hannibal looks at him as he puts them away to dry. His eyes follow Will as Will leaves the kitchen and goes through the door to their small living room where he disappears from Hannibal’s line of sight.

Once Hannibal finishes eating he clears the table making two trips and pausing in between each. He cleans the rest of the dishes and dries it all off and puts it all back into place. When he lifts the pan to put it back it falls from his hand and hits the floor with a loud noise. Some of the floor tile chip away and Hannibal watches the dust and tiny fragments as if time moves through gelatin. The fragments break loose and cut through the air, the tiny tendrils of dust whirl up and curl away, snakelike. In that span of time Will has returned to the kitchen; Hannibal sees him in the peripheral of his vision. Will picks the pan up and puts it away. He touches his toes to the chink in the tiles and gives Hannibal a wry smile.

Hannibal clenches his fists.

He looks at the small crack left in the floor and tries to uncurl his fingers only to feel how blunt nails dig deeper and deeper into his palms. Finally, with a sigh hissed through clenched teeth, he relaxes his fingers and rolls his shoulders back and stops biting his teeth together.

“Hannibal.”

Will’s voice settles thick and warm somewhere underneath Hannibal’s lungs and he feels the minute twitch he makes, a curl to his upper lip, a narrowing of his eyes, and as a hand touches his shoulder he recoils.

He watches Will’s hand slowly fall to hang by his side. Looks at eyebrows pulled together and eyes that have a faint shine to them. Watches the bob of Will’s throat as he swallows, sees his lips part but how he shuts his mouth without a words or even a breath slipping out. He looks at Will as Will backs away a few steps before turning to leave.

Hannibal keeps his eyes on a spot between Will’s shoulderblades as Will walks through the door. He keeps staring at thin air for a good while afterwards; his heartbeat loud in his ears, like the roaring roll of the sea, and his eyes blinking and the air he breathes rushes past against the roof of his mouth and barely reaches his lungs before it escapes shakily.

When Hannibal does enter the living room, breathing deeply and evenly, he sees Will propped up in the armchair – television and couch forgone in favor of a smaller piano that yet takes up most of the space. Hannibal walks over, and with a hand at the back of the chair, he leans down a little, body heavy against the hard leather back of the furniture. Will has Hannibal’s tablet balanced on a pillow across his lap and scrolls with his right hand.

“No news worth mentioning,” Will says without looking up.

“We are likely presumed dead.”

“No, not likely. We are dead.” Will stops scrolling but doesn’t look up. “It keeps the general public form uh— _stampeding._ ”

“Old Jack has not yet let go of the idea we may be alive.”

Will looks at him then. Smiles a slow and wry smile. “No, he hasn’t.”

Hannibal looks into Will’s eyes and he can see thoughts and emotions whirl and gleam inside. But it’s like a moving stream.

He licks his lips and furrows his brow. “Would you rather he had?”

Will gives a short laugh. “There are lots of things I’d rather.”

Will breaks eye contact and Hannibal blinks as contrasts melt away and the colors of the room meld and the light seems to dim. He reaches out, places a hand on Will’s right shoulder and feels the warmth of his skin through the thick, woolen sweater. It travels through his veins and curls in his belly. Then Will’s hand reaches up and covers his and Hannibal feels a tiny tremble though his body. There’s a sensation, a low hum that vibrates in his skin and crackles along his nerves. The tips of his tongue parts his lips and quivering exhales falls past them, tumbling free and falling. His joints seem locked into place. Muscles tense and clinging to the bones.

When Will looks up at him, gaze finding Hannibal’s, Hannibal falls into the roiling waves of Will’s eyes and he drops his gaze.

Hannibal’s fingers flex against Will’s shoulder and Will moves his own hand away. When Hannibal pulls back his hand curls into a fist. He closes his eyes and breathes. In silence he goes to his bedroom and, without a glance over his shoulder, he closes the door behind him.

The next day Hannibal spends much of the afternoon drawing. He sees Will move about the house in short intervals. Between his bedroom and the kitchen table. From there to the armchair. Long pauses. Strained breathing. The rustling of pills as Will shakes out a dosage from his bottle. Hannibal glances at Will and sees him swallow them dry, curl up in the armchair, trying to pull his arms and legs close to his body and only partially succeeding, and closing his eyes with a small noise.

Hannibal continues to draw.

At the sound of footsteps coming up behind him he still his hand and shifts his arm from resting beside the paper to hover partially above it.

“Are you planning on making an elaborate meal of me once you get you appetite back?” Will says, breath hitting Hannibal’s neck in a warm huff of air.

It sends a tingle through him.

“No, not at all.”

“Then why the pomegranate?”

Hannibal looks over his shoulder, sees Will hunched down slightly, body curled close to his. The scent of him curls around Hannibal. He looks back at his drawing and doesn’t reply at once. In his drawing, Will is on his back, laid out against silken and soft materials that furl and flow. He has one knee drawn up, head tilted back and slightly to the side, lips parted just a fraction and eyes half-closed.

“There is more than one theory on which fruit Adam and Eve were forbidden by God to eat,” he says then, eyes on the drawing.

He looks up as Will gives a short laugh. Smiles as he sees Will’s lips curl.

“Forbidden fruit?” Will arches an eyebrow.

Hannibal touches the pencil to his drawing, deepens the shade on one of the cracked open pomegranates.

“You’ve never cared what God has to say, Hannibal.”

Hannibal’s lips twitch and tilt upwards just a bit. He looks up at Will. “‘You shall not eat of the fruit of the tree that is in the midst of the garden, neither shall you touch it, lest you die.’”

Will’s smile curve, his eyebrows arch. “You will not surely die.”

Hannibal feels each of Will’s fingertips as they slowly touch his shoulder. They shift from there to his neck, flutters over his pulse, that ebbs and flows in rapid tidal waves. The blood in his heart swelling and spilling over again and again. The fingers cards though his hair and grips it, tugging lightly. He leans into the touch.

“Are you sure you don’t want a taste?”

Hannibal meets Will’s gaze once more. He looks into the swirling deep, his mind painting images of water dwelling creatures seeking to drown foolish men. Creatures with luminous skin and tailfin and bluesilver scales. Blue, blue eyes and glistening curls on its head. Pale pink lips. And such sharp teeth.

Will’s exhales come hot and damp against Hannibal’s lips and Hannibal shivers underneath his touch, his gaze.

He tilts his head back, draws a breath and closes his eyes.


End file.
